My Planning Tools for 2020-2021 :: Logbooks and Timetables

I have had some requests on Instagram to share a closer look at my logbook, so I thought I'd hop over here and pull together a post about my process this year. This is one of those topics it is much easier to blog about than to answer DMs about!

In the past, I have used different ways of organizing my plans, managing my days, and pre-reading. I have blogged about those strategies as well.

Here I'm going to share about what is working for us this year. Over the past couple years, I have changed my approach quite a bit -- and for the better! I have a few different tools I am using that have been very successful for us, even with seven students in three Forms and lots of littles alongside.

LOGBOOK

But for the past couple years, I have adopted the practice of a logbook, which is an idea straight from the PNEU that I have adapted for our family. Amy was the one who introduced me to the logbook -- she and I discussed the topic briefly over at Charlotte Mason Coast to Coast a couple years ago. (If you are a CMEC member, we went into logbooks in more depth during this year's Summer Planning Mini-Retreat, and we have plenty of examples on the Logbooks and Timetables page under Resources.)

Simply put, the logbook offers me a place to LOG the work we do in each lesson block and my reflections on that work (as needed).

This year, I am using two-page spreads for each 5-week session (half-term -- we do 10-week terms). Last year I tried to fit a full term on one spread and I didn't have enough room for notes, but the half-term seems to be just right.

I have spreads for Form 1 and 2 readings, Form 2 readings and work, Form 1 students, and family studies. This grid format allows me to see several weeks at a glance so that I can notice patterns, ongoing problems, and progress.

Here are a few filled-in examples from earlier this year:

I have my logbook open during the day so I can jot down notes as we go!

SCHOOL PLANNER

I also use my logbook for planning. I write up a weekly grid to work from based on each day's timetable, then sit down weekly to think through my plans for each slot.

blank and ready to go!

filled in for the week  (except special study -- I jot my plans there over the weekend)

I am doing less weekly pre-reading this year since I did so much over the summer. So I get out my pre-reading notebook to reference during this prep session, adding any important notes I have for myself and marking with a post-it any discussion points I want to bring up with my older kids during the week. (I just pull out my pre-reading notebook and work from there in those moments.)

My weekly prep time takes about an hour this year. I also do some related bedtime reading: the high school literature books, biographies, and religion reading that I didn't get to over the break.

At the end of each day, I look back over my plans and see what didn't get covered -- and I circle it. Sometimes I think we'll have time for an activity that we don't actually fit in the block. Sometimes we read a little less (or more!) than I had planned. I circle those things to remind me to consider them when I am making the next week's plans or to cover at Weekly Meeting, depending on what it is. (Sometimes I have a discussion point or side note I wanted to bring up with my high schoolers but forgot. That kind of thing I bring to Weekly Meeting on Friday to discuss there.)

This weekly grid is my brain during the week! I use it to direct my lessons for every Form, every day.

PRE-READING NOTEBOOK

I mentioned my pre-reading notebook above. I have shared about various ways I have kept my notes before.

This year, I had much more reading to do with the older kids in high school, so I decided to simplify my notebook practices. Instead of drawing and painting in my pre-reading commonplace and keeping another notebook with more logistical notes, I am just keeping one lined notebook this year for all of my notes. 

The first half has my book notes - main ideas, discussion points, ideas for lessons. 

The second half is a simple commonplace book -- just quotes.

I filled up most of this notebook over the summer, but there is still room for me to add for the books I am reading week by week or term by term.

This is now my reference book that I pull out weekly (at Weekly Meeting and my weekly planning time), whereas my logbook is my working notebook that I use daily.

In the past, my pre-reading notebook has been a creative project for me. But this year, I wanted to focus on commonplace-keeping and working in my Book of Centuries, so that is where I have been putting my reading-related notebook time.

LOGBOOKS FOR HIGH SCHOOLERS

My high school kids are actually keeping their own logbooks this year, so although I do keep my plans for them in my weekly spread, I do not log their work daily. I bought planners from Target that are set up with blank categories so that they could dedicate a column to each day of the week and just work down their timetable of subjects in order. I have them make note of Afternoon Occupations at the bottom of each column, and they have space on the side for them to make note of things they want to discuss at Weekly Meeting, goals for themselves, notes for online classes, etc. They have this logbook, their timetable, and their program, and they work through their days very independently! It has worked so smoothly for us.

Any notes that I want to keep about my high schoolers go right on my weekly spread (that right column has room for my general reflections). Or if there is an issue I need to troubleshoot, I just turn the page and brainstorm there! The notebook is set up like a bullet journal in that I don't have it all laid out in advance. This allows me a lot of flexibility in my record-keeping.

FAMILY TIMETABLES

I used to schedule our days to be very flexible, just carving out school blocks and fitting in whatever fit on a given day. I felt like that worked very well for the season I was in at the beginning, with more littles than school-aged kids. It also fit my personality -- I am one that tends to push too hard rather than not hard enough, so even though I didn't have a strict line-up for the day, we were always getting it all done. It was a good system for us.

But the past two years I have worked with a formal timetable for our lessons time and I LOVE it. I don't think I could school this many kids, have this many good conversations, hit all the "books and things," and still keep my sanity without it! I put a lot of thought into what our schedule should look like during the summer and then just follow it week by week. If I need to make a change -- if something isn't working or we want to try something new -- I just adjust it, print a new one, and go from there. I also review the timetable after each five weeks to see if it needs a refresh.

Since I have multiple Forms, I have a family timetable for each weekday. The stack is hung on the fridge and we flip to the right day each morning. 

My high schoolers each have their own timetable in their notebook. Their timetables are personal to them because they share books, so I often have them flip-flop subjects to accommodate that. But I still have them on our family chart so that I know roughly where they are in their day at any given time. And they join us for afternoon lessons, so I can see at a glance what time that will happen on any given day.

All that said, we do not always follow this exactly as scheduled. Right now, Emilia is napping in the morning and late afternoon and Damien naps mid-afternoon. So occasionally, I will swap the Form 1 and 2 kids' lesson block (12:30-3pm) and outside time -- we begin their line-up of lessons whenever she goes out and work straight for two hours. Then we pick back up when the older kids are scheduled to join us at around 2pm for our last few family subjects each day. But even when we change our beginning time, we still follow the order and length of these lessons, which keeps us all on track and ensures we have variety and balance!

The timetable takes away the effort of decision, holds me accountable, gives me peace in the moment, and helps our days with multiple students run smoothly. I don't have to think through whether one of my students will need a book while another student is already using it, or if I'll be available to hear a narration. All of that has been accommodated! And I can adjust during my reflection time when needed.

So that's a tour through my tools this year. Have you tried a logbook? Where do you like to keep your notes and thoughts for lessons, or your reflections on the day/term/year? I'd love to hear what methods work for you. :)

(And because I know you are going to ask: the robin's egg blue and navy notebooks below are hardcover XL classic moleskines in lined for the pre-reading notebook and dot grid for the logbook. I use my very favorite mechanical pencil, a black ballpoint, and a set of Staedtler Triplus Fineliners in these notebooks. There is some ghosting with the markers, but since I only use those to draw my grids (and opt for light colors anyway), I am fine with that. Pencil and ballpoint work fine on these thin pages, though. The thinness of the pages allows for a LOT of pages in just one small notebook, which I really like for this purpose. Links above are affiliate links. Thanks for your support!)

Our Weekly Meeting

Last month, I explained how I do my Weekly Planning + Pre-Reading, all in one session before the week begins.  If you haven't read that post yet, head over and check that out first -- I'll be referencing some of my planning steps as I explain this second pillar of my weekly process.  (You can also take a look at this year's general scheduling notes here for context.)

Today I'm going to talk about the second of my two weekly checkpoints that keep our homeschool humming along: our Weekly Meeting.

During my Weekly Planning session, I prepare my whole week: my Year 5 kids' work, my Form I kids' work, and my own personal tasks and goals.  The Weekly Meeting, on the other hand, is really just for my Year 5 kids.  They are largely independent in their lessons at this point -- I do roughly one reading and one 15-minute skill-work session (grammar, Latin, etc.) with them each day.  We also do quite a bit of work as a family (Morning Basket, fine arts, foreign language), and I listen to lots and lots of narrations from them. ;)  Everything else they handle on their own, with my guidance.

In the past, I was correcting and looking over assignments as they were finished.  So multiple times a day, I was stopping what I was doing to have a conversation about their work.  For a while, that wasn't a problem to anyone but me and my own addled mind.  But once I added a fourth student and started spending quite a bit of my time juggling between those two Form I kids, the Year 5 kids were often coming to me while in the middle of a homeschool task with the younger ones.  This not only disrupted my train of thought and action but also my young students'.  I also couldn't fit in those conversations during naptime, which was now primarily dedicated to Form I read-alouds.  There is nothing that gets me more frustrated as a teacher than a older kid coming in an interrupting my reading with a new student-narrator.  I treat those sessions as fairly sacrosanct and it throws off my rhythm.  But it wasn't my kids' fault, because that was when our check-ins had happened in the past.

I also needed a better way of keeping up with the needs, attitudes, challenges, and questions of my older students.  As we moved closer and closer toward independence, I found that we had fewer daily needs but more weekly needs -- and those needs were likely to fall through the cracks since they weren't as pressing.  My fifth grader wasn't sitting next to me to do his copywork anymore, but he still needed me to look it over, to talk about technique.  Another example: he was often narrating in the car on the way to the beach or while I was making dinner.  I'm mentally ready to hear at those moments but not necessarily mentally ready to discuss -- but I didn't want that part of the narration process to fall by the wayside just when they began to need it most.  I needed a way to manage those to-dos, something on the calendar to make sure my Year 5 students and I were getting the time together we needed.  But I also needed it to not take up bunches of tiny bits in my everyday, when they felt like interruptions rather than opportunities.

That is the story behind the Weekly Meeting, which I have found to be a very powerful tool in our homeschool.  It is such a simple addition, but it has made a huge difference for me in striking that balance between staying connected to my independent students and keeping the variety of grades I'm schooling from taking over my life and mind. ;)

Here's how it works, in process form:

First, we started a new paperwork system to mimic our new plan: my Big Kids turn all work into my tray.  It's just a paper tray by my "command center" that has been made the landing spot for everything: grammar worksheets, math notebooks, drawings from my kindergartener, paper crafts from my origami lover.  Each day, I have a scheduled time when I make corrections to skill-based work.  Some gets sent back to my kids for correcting, and then gets turned in again.  Then I pop those papers as well as any work we need to discuss together (like written narrations) into my Weekly Meeting folder, which holds my planning sheet, notes from pre-reading, handouts, and all the other bits I need to go over.

Here's a zoom-in on that, just focused on that middle section:

On the left of the list are the items I need to complete before Weekly Meeting.  I like to do the actual correcting beforehand to use our hour meeting time more efficiently.  Year 5 keeping gets done usually on the weekend, when I do my pre-reading.  So these items get spread throughout the week prior, but I do a quick check to make sure they're complete before we meet.

My kids also collect items to bring to Weekly Meeting.  They have a list in their binders to make sure they arrive prepared:

On Friday afternoons when all schoolwork is done, the Big Kids and I sit down and go through our Weekly Meeting list:

:: We share our keeping for the week.  That means not only do I look over their century charts, maps, reading logs, and commonplace books, but I also show them mine.  My hope is that there is a shared sense of educational eagerness in our home, and this is one way I work toward that.

:: Either they or I read through their written narrations, usually aloud because they like to hear each other's.  They do two weekly, one for science and one for history, and this term they have an additional written narration for their chosen biography.  During this time, I have a chance to comment on content and correct grammatical and spelling errors, as well as note particular issues they are having so that I can consider those during dictation selection.  (Note: at this point, we do not edit their narrations to completion.  These are just quick notes and fixes.)

:: We also look through all their other written work: math, Latin, Italian, copywork, and so on.  They go through any lingering mistakes from the week, sometimes with my help and sometimes on their own depending on what it is.  But by the end of Weekly Meeting, all written work should be ready to turn in or put away.

:: I choose a few Big Questions from my own notes to discuss, and they share any that they have.  They also can ask other questions -- for example, they are both keeping presidential charts on their own, so they will ask me the name of a president's spouse or his year of death if it isn't mentioned in their readings for the week.  They can also bring concerns to me: maybe they're having trouble making capital Qs in cursive, or they are almost done memorizing their poem and need help choosing another.  They also let me know when they need refills of copywork paper or pencil lead or new supplies for a handicrafts project.  These are the kinds of questions and concerns that it's helpful to condense into meeting time.

:: They turn in last week's checklists and I give them their new ones.  We also go over any adjustments to the schedule and look over plans for the coming week: lessons, exercise, menu, and such.

Then everything gets shelved or filed and we can head into the weekend.  And I can head into my pre-reading session for the next week with a clean slate on Saturday.

A few more thoughts on the advantages I've seen:

Most weeks it looks like the process I outlined above.  But on weeks we are busy, we have the option of making this a correction-and-question session, then filing everything and moving on.  So ideally it stretches out to about an hour with chat and sharing, but it can also be a 20-minute affair when needed.

During our meeting, the kids handle any lingering assignments so we can put away the books for the weekend.  That's a relief for me because I don't like my schoolwork spilling into Saturday, which can sometimes happen if a student is dawdling over math corrections or something. Instead, we do timed correction sessions through the week and then I help the student during this "study hall" time.  And then it's done.

Another real benefit to our Weekly Meeting is that it meets my need to compartmentalize and mono-task (is that a word?). I tell the kids to bring all their questions (about our readings, about our calendar and upcoming events, about various to-dos or concerns they have) to Weekly Meeting.  So instead of getting hit with all kinds of random complaints and queries day by day, I can deal with them all at once.  (Ideally.  Some kids are better at this than others.)  I literally have them write these on their checklist.  They feel heard; I feel sane.  It's a win-win.

Obviously, a Weekly Meeting is not essential for most families!  Like a Morning Basket or a Pre-Reading Session, it is one way to organize a chunk of your homeschooling tasks.  For us, with the particular students and schedule I have, it has been a great addition.

Do you do a weekly check-in with your older students?  This is new to me, but I know it isn't new to veteran mamas who have been doing similar daily or weekly check-ins for years.  I'm grateful for any ideas you'd like to share as I plan our format for next year!

My Weekly Planning + Pre-Reading Session

In this fall's scheduling post I mentioned our Weekly Meeting and my Weekly Planning Session. These are the two cornerstones toward my goal of keeping our homeschool humming along, the parts of my schedule that keep me on track, prepared, and checked in with my students.  I've given some sneak peeks over on Instagram but here will be a detailed look at how I organize things for my Year 5 kids and my Form I students.  What I share here isn't specific to any particular year, though -- it's just some principles for how to order your homeschool week that could be applied to any situation.

I'm going to start with my Weekly Planning Session, and I'll cover the Weekly Meeting in my next post.  Get ready for a bunch of nitty-gritty homeschool talk!

First, let's look again at that sheet I print out weekly for my planning:

I'm going to focus on the top section there: my list of tasks for the Weekly Planning Session.

You could easily keep these kinds of lists in Evernote or another digital form and access with your computer or tablet -- it certainly doesn't have to be printed.  I like manually checking off and writing my notes in pen, but I fully acknowledge it's not the most efficient tool.  It's just most efficient for me because I like it best, which means it actually gets done. (Know thyself and all that!)

The point is to have a list of things you need to do during your weekly planning session.  For me, that's pre-reading and some legwork for our more hands-on activities.  This list will vary depending on how many students you have, how independent they are, how you teach your other subjects, and how much you like to plan day-to-day.  I don't like to play day-to-day at all -- my life on the daily level is far more unpredictable, so if things don't get done during this session, chances are they won't get done at all that week.  So I make it a priority to be consistent.

When I have handle my weekly planning also doesn't matter, though I prefer some time during the weekend: usually late Saturday mornings, but sometimes Friday nights if we have plans all day Saturday. I sit down with this list, my agenda and school folder, a favorite beverage, and my laptop in the dining room next to our school bookshelves.  I spend about 1.5-2 hours (with lots of interruptions from small people, though my husband runs interference too!) checking off the items on this list.

This list dictates how I spend those hours.  Here's is a step-by-step of my process:

:: The bulk of  my time is spent reading through all the independent reading my Year 5 kids will do that week.  I started pre-reading consistently a couple years ago, and it has made all the difference in how I feel about my role as a teacher.  I go into each week feeling prepared and ready, and I am able to engage with my students much more effectively.  I also am getting so much personally out of the books -- I definitely count it as part of refreshing Mother Culture.

I know not everyone has the time to pre-read, but even if you can just manage it for a book or two, it's worth the effort!  Perhaps you could pick the hardest book, or the book you're least familiar with...or the book you most want to read! ;)  Also, if you're having trouble fitting it in, a week-by-week approach might not be best for you.  As students get older, their reading load increases, and it's not possible to read it all in a couple hours on a Saturday -- the mom of a teen student might want to pre-read a couple books daily, in a morning quiet time or before bed.  Perhaps summertime works best for you, and you keep your notes by book rather than by week.  Maybe you choose a couple books to read and a couple to listen to on audio and skip the note-taking, just aiming for listening and narrating to yourself as you go along.  You can homeschool without pre-reading, but I think you'll find that every little bit bears fruit.  Consider brainstorming how to make it happen in your home.  I guarantee you'll be glad you did!

I read with a place to take notes next to me -- I keep my notes on the back of my Weekly Planning sheet so that I have all my notes handy during our Weekly Meeting (more on that another time).

I have a note-taking code to myself: I star items I want to look up or add to my own keeping (commonplace, century chart, maps) -- things like dates, favorite quotes, names, facts I'd like to check on.  I put a Q next to discussion questions I might like to pose to my kids either after their narration or during our Weekly Meeting.  At the end of the year, my plan is to scan these notes and pop them onto Evernote in my Year 5 notebook for the next time around.  This also allows them to be searchable for future reference.

:: Afterward, I  take a few minutes to look up the AO study guides for the books we're reading and my own notes about supplemental activities.  That includes both books I'll be reading aloud and ones they're working on independently, as well as assignments for my Form I students.  For Year 5, I check a list of some experiments we're doing alongside Christian Liberty Nature Reader (I'd pull the required materials), the Madam How Lady Why study guide (I highlight in Evernote any discussion points I want to raise), any photos I want to view for the Book of Marvels, and so on.  I also put a post-it on the illustrations I want to use alongside The Burgess Book of Animals for my Form I kids and check whethere Long's Home Geography has us doing any hands-on work this week.

:: Next I take a quick look at my term charts to see if there's anything of note this week so I can amend the weekly checklist. Often there are weeks in which a particular book isn't scheduled, and I like to update my weekly checklist to reflect that. (For example, here I crossed out Our Island Story for my Year 2 student and added D'Aulaires' Abraham Lincoln, which we'll be reading over the next few weeks.)

:: I also add any changing bits to my weekly checklist: art study, music study, nature journaling challenge, nature study plans.  As I add those, I check if there's anything that needs to be prepared: is the art print ready to go?  Are the mp3s I need on my phone or do I have a CD handy?  Do I need to read a section from the Handbook of Nature Study for our Friday get-together?  Is my audio recording for Shakespeare loaded onto my computer?  Did I need to request a book from the library?  And so on.  This is a great time to look over whether the items I need for weekly hands-on subjects are prepared so I'm not left scrambling during the school week.

:: I take a few moments to prepare our Italian materials for the week too.  Over the summer, I sorted my Italian bin into some fabulous colored poly folders so that I can access our new and review activities more easily.  Each week, I work from a review folder and our current folder.  As items get mastered, they move from the current folder into one my my review folders.  I cycle through my review folders by changing to a new one each week.  My current folder requires some weekly organizing: I look over the materials I have in there and decide what activities to plan for the week ahead.  Sometimes I make a checklist of goals for the week and sometimes I just pull a few things from the folder, but at least everything is there at my fingertips.  I also choose the week's Italian dictation and written assignment for my Year 5 kids.

:: Then: remember all those starred items in my notes?  Now is the time to handle those!  I do my own Year 5 keeping, adding entries to my Century Chart, commonplace book (I have one dedicated to "school readings"), and maps.

:: Then: the Q notes?  I choose a few of the not-to-miss questions I've pondered and write those on the front of my planning sheet so they're all ready to go for our Weekly Meeting.  I also note in the same box any to-dos of particular importance that I want make sure to cover then as well.  The notes in that box along with the list above it determine how I spend our Weekly Meeting time.

:: Last is some personal prep work: I do some weekly-review-style brainstorming and troubleshoot any problem areas in attitudes, schedule, or assignments.  I look through my calendar for the week and create my menu plan.  I make sure my tablet is charged for school readings and go through the week's paperwork in my folder and tray.  (More on those "landing spots" during my Weekly Meeting post too.)

Then I put everything away and go about the rest of my weekend, ready to start fresh on Monday!

I referred to our Weekly Meeting several times, and that will be coming up next time.  So if you have questions about that process, save them until I get a chance to flesh that out a bit more.  But if there was anything unclear about what I have written here, feel free to let me know in the comments and I'll try to elaborate. :)

And others have been chatting about Weekly Planning lately too!  Dawn shared snapshots of her planning sheet, which includes both a comprehensive list of to-dos and a focused note-taking page.  And Jen Mackintosh has some gorgeous free printables to get you planning in style as well.  I so appreciate these ladies sharing tips and tricks and am happy to add my own process to the conversation too.

Happy Planning! :)

This Year's Paper Plans :: Schedules, Chore Charts, Checklists, and More

Instead of my annual monster post on our schedules, I'm going to break this post into three parts.  Today I'm sharing our routine and checklists, and then next week I'll chat about my Weekly Planning and Pre-Reading Session and our Weekly Meeting.

Also, if you really looking for more nitty-gritty details beyond what I have here, you might take a look at my scheduling post from last year. You'll find that they're very similar.  :)  I have changed bits here and there, but our routine really is roughly the same.  You can also take a look at my Year 5 and Form I plans from earlier this fall for more information.

As usual, my organizational strategy consists of a series of paper forms that keep our home humming along:

:: A Weekly Routine / Average Day Schedule / Average Day Chart.  I put a little more time into forming our weekly routine this year since I added another student and wasn't sure how I would fit it all in. We follow this time table roughly on the days that we are home.

Why schedule down to the quarter hour when I'm a mom with lots of littles in need of flexibility?  Because it gives me assurance that it is possible to meet all our goals for the week: there can be short lessons, outside time, chores, and free time, all without chaos or stress, if I'm inclined to stick to this.  This schedule provides an order to rest in and a set of guideposts on which to peg my day.  For example, I plan math and copywork with my Form I kids first thing in the morning and aim to stop for prayers and breakfast at 8:30.  I don't care what order we do math and copywork in, and I'm changing diapers, pouring milk, and snuggling littles during that block too.  But I have a guideline that keeps me from overdoing morning work while holding me accountable so that we're not left with unexpected to-dos at the end of the day.

That said, I built ample margins into our routine.  Not listed on here are bathroom breaks, stops to switch out the laundry, feeding the baby, and so on -- those happen within the school blocks.  That means my kids are actually schooling for less time than this suggests.  So in one sense it is representative of our assignments and our time table, but in another sense we are much more flexible than an "average day schedule" can express.

:: My Weekly Checklist.  This has all the work that I am responsible for.  That includes all my Form I kids' work, since I don't require them to be independently responsible for anything but chores.  And it includes a small bit of my Year 5 kids' work, since I do require independence of them.  Listed here is the Year 5 work we do together, and then the rest of their work is on their weekly checklist.  Last year I had everything on mine, but this year, it made more sense to streamline my own lists so that they represent what I personally am responsible for.  I just print out a new one of these each week and spend a bit of time during my Weekly Planning Session filling in any blanks and making any adjustments.

:: My Term charts. In the past, I typed the assignments for each book for each week onto my weekly checklist.  Now that I'm juggling three years, the extra time that takes isn't worth it to me.  So I just have the book listed and I look at the actual reading assignment in one of two places: our schedule bookmarks (in every assigned book) or my term charts (in my school folder, and the Big Kids have copies in their binders too).  These are taken from the AmblesideOnline website and adjusted for our needs -- they have editable Word documents at the top of each year's booklist that I download and tweak for our terms.  So easy!

:: My kids' checklists.  My Year 5 students have a robust weekly assignment sheet that our homeschool couldn't run without.  It lets them know what to do and suggests when to do it.  I divided it into days this year because now that they're managing their own time, it is a help to them to know how much to get done on a given day rather than confronting an overall list of weekly items.  And they also don't need as much flexibility as I do since they're not taking care of the baby, working around naptimes, and such. (As you can see above, my checklist is not broken into days.  I need the flexibility since I'm managing the littles.)

My Year 2 student also has an assignment sheet, simply because she begged for one. ;) I think it's probably a good habit for her anyway, as she is more productive and cheerful when she sees what needs to be done.  But it's not technically necessary since she does all her schoolwork with me.  (My Year 1 son doesn't have one, though now he's asking too.  Maybe next year.)

:: A Pre-Reading and Planning Sheet.  This is the bit which I have gotten lots of questions about this fall since I have been posting about my weekly planning session on Instagram.  It's going to get its own post next week.  Lots of details to come!  Simply put: this is what I use to structure my weekly planning session (for both school and home) and my weekly meeting with my Year 5 kids.  I also keep my reading notes on the back.

:: Last, our Chore Charts.  We adjust chores every summer so that we can iron out the kinks before the school year rolls around.  The weekly schedule is posted on the fridge for easy reference.  Yes, this is a very thorough list.  Yes, it needs to be that way for things to run smoothly!  Everyone knows his job and things get done much more efficiently.  When I didn't spell things out so clearly, I was constantly sorting squabbles, bossing around, and just generally having to micro-manage.  Now the chart micro-manages for me while I play with the baby. ;)  I also built several inspection times into my day for when I'm noticing my kids are slipping in their habits and need some oversight.  And that "Bi-Weekly Chores" list at the bottom is for a bi-weekly slot in our chore schedule and for assigning extra chores for misbehaving kids. (Let's just say I have to use those more often with some kids than with others.  Ahem.)

~~~

These are the paper plans that help me hold myself accountable and let my kids know what to expect.  Our household couldn't run without them!

But I can't forget my usual caveat: the truth about organization is that there is no one solution to your organizational problems.  Effective organizational strategies have to do with knowing yourself and your family really well: your needs, your home, how your mind works, how much you can handle, how your kids thrive, your personality, your goals, your vision of success.  If you start there (rather than with these forms here!), you'll be much more likely to find a plan that works for you.

Still, I share our plans because I think examples can be very helpful and give curious moms a place to start.  And because I enjoy gleaning ideas from others! :)  I hope this gives you a glimpse into one way of structuring a busy home life.

Back with lots of pre-reading, planning, and meeting chat soon!

Our Weekly Checklist (and a bunch more organizational chat too!)

I have been working from a weekly checklist for several years now.  For a variety of reasons, it's suiting us perfectly in this season of life!  This year, I'm using pretty much the same template but I've adjusted it a bit to account for multiple kids in multiple levels and for growing independence for my two oldest.

I also rely on a few other items for keeping our homeschool organized: a Daily Schedule, a Weekly Planning Page, and a Chore Routine sheet.  I'm going to share them all here in case they are helpful to you.

Obviously, your schedule will likely look nothing like mine--it is very particular to our family rhythm.  But so many of you have asked what our school day looks like and for copies of our scheduling template, so I thought I'd upload a downloadable set in case you'd like your own versions to fiddle around with.  (By the way, when you open it in Google Drive or as a preview, the formatting doesn't come through correctly.  You need to download the file and open in Word to get the correct format.)

Brace yourselves--this is a long one!  I thought about breaking it into a series but then I figured I should just get it all out there now.  (And I have pregnancy insomnia to thank for actually making that happen!)  So grab a cup of tea and make yourselves comfortable. ;)

I described the basic set-up of our weekly checklist last year, and that remains the same:

:: Daily Work for the Bigs.  Each student has his or her own list of daily work at the top.  My older two kids (Year 4) do their daily work on their own.  Their responsibilities are listed in more detail on their personal assignment sheets (shared below)--for example, I list out there what "binder work" entails and how long they should spend on each item.  I don't need that level of detail on my list because they are the ones responsible for completing it.

:: Daily Work for the Middles.  Cate (Year 1) and Xavier (my kindergartener) do all their daily work with me.

:: Daily Work for the Family. And then there is the daily work we do together, including poetry, Italian, memory work (reading of the selections we're currently learning), and recitation (review of the selections we have learned in the past). We still use our Evernote "notebook" to organize our memory work, and poetry is part of our Morning Basket.

:: Memory Work.  I have our current selections (as well as our current read-alouds) in the daily work section too.

:: Weekly Work for the Bigs.  At the bottom left, I have the Year 4 assignments broken into two sections: what we do together and what they do on their own.  This is more productive for me than divisions by day because I appreciate the flexibility and because I really only need to keep track of the items I am responsible for doing alongside them.

For readings, the first bubble is for completing the reading and the second is for narrating it.  (You can see that some readings only have one bubble--this is because they aren't responsible for narrating those.)  For non-reading assignments like Latin, Grammar, and so on, the number of bubbles corresponds to the number of days per week each is scheduled.  So as you can see, we do four days a week of Grammar/Dictation, two of Latin, and one of Written Italian.  And you'll see on the bottom that they also do Written Italian once on their own.  (The first might be a guided assignment with me and the second might be copywork, for example.)

:: Weekly Work for the Middles.  I do all Cate's Year 1 readings aloud, so hers are listed in one box.  I also have there "First Communion Basket" with four bubbles, which means that I choose a book to read from daily from a basket I have of her First Communion resources.  (More on that when I get around to sharing my Year 1 plans.)

:: Weekly Work for the Family.  This includes all our Keeping, as well as music study, picture study, etc.  At the bottom of that left column, I have our Morning Basket readings listed since we do those as a family too.  I aim to read one of those per day, and they are not narrated.

The older two have their own weekly checklist to work from (shown above).  Each week, I cut and paste that "Year 4 Assignments - Independent" section onto the little half-sheet and print it for them.  Everything else stays the same week to week.  The top details their daily tasks, including the work for their morning block.  They do those items four days a week, leaving the fifth for a morning nature study outing.  The top also has their chore checklists--they each have a "Bathroom/Other" and a "Floors" chore scheduled daily.  In the middle are their weekly assignments.  They are responsible for about two readings daily.  The Keeping we do together, but I like them to have it printed there so that they begin to take ownership.

At the bottom is the scheduled afternoon block, which they do during the babies' nap while I'm working with the middles.  Each day has a certain schedule because I need them not to interrupt during that block, so I have it all laid out there for them and let them move through it on their own.

I'm going to share now our Daily Schedule so that you can see how all of this looks in practice:

On the left is basically my schedule, and on the right is my two older kids'.

We only use this schedule four days of the week.  One of those days we have our homeschool park day, but luckily it's in the morning, so it basically just shifts our usual backyard time to the park and we're home in time for naptime lessons.  And one day a week we don't follow this schedule at all: we meet up for a nature study outing with friends in the morning and then spend naptime working on our nature journals and listening to an audiobook.  But as Brandy would call it, this is our "average day chart." :)

In truth, our days are not on so strict a timetable.  We have hard stops like naptime and our afternoon play time, but we make lots of adjustments.  I do find the daily schedule useful laid out in this level of detail for a few reasons, though:

:: When the baby comes, I can just hand the kids this chart and let them direct themselves. ;)
:: It keeps me beholden to time limits on our subjects so that we are hitting all the items that I want to over the course of the week.
:: I know that all I have scheduled *can* realistically fit into our normal day.

Each week I also print out the following:

I am loving this simple Weekly Planning Sheet that keeps me accountable to doing some pre-week planning.  At the top are all the items I need to do each week to ensure smooth school day--you know, so I don't realize on Monday morning that the kids don't have new math drills, I forgot to pre-read a couple books, and I haven't a clue what we're doing for Italian.  I print this on Friday and aim to hit all the items by the end of the weekend.  It's working great so far.

In the middle is the Weekly Meeting section, which we haven't begun in earnest yet.  We have been doing all the items, but we haven't been doing them in as organized a fashion.  I really want to take just twenty minutes or so each week with my Year 4 students to sit down and touch base regarding their school assignments, including the topics I have listed there.  This is a habit I want to begin starting in Term 2.

And at the bottom is my weekly menu.  I have pretty faithfully written weekly menus for years now (it keeps me sane to know what's for dinner in advance), but now that the kids are helping more in the kitchen, I take some time to go over the menu with them too.  We plan breakfasts and lunches and consider any prep work they'll need to do, and then I plan the dinners on my own.  It's great to have it all in writing.  (Not that it keeps me from getting the "what's for dinner?" question dozens of times a day.  Ahem.)

And last but not least, this is our current Chore Routine that hangs on the fridge.  It includes tasks for me and my three oldest (9, almost-9, and 6) and is color coded.  I listed it by day number rather than day of the week in case we miss a day--we just do the next one, and day 5 ends up being on the weekend, no problem.  The kids do their "Day 1" chores on Monday and continue on from there.

A lot of organizational talk, I know!  Let me know if you want to chat about anything in particular.  You can find the bundle of downloadable templates here.  (And remember, as I said at the top: You need to download the file and open in Word to get the correct format.  In the preview and in Google Docs, it will not format correctly.) 

Happy Planning!

Cate's Kindergarten

As I reorganized the bookshelves and school supplies before school began this year, I decided to collect little "surprises" into a special basket for my new kindergartener's school time.  Normally, I wouldn't plan any formal school period at all, but this girl begs to "do school" like her siblings and has been looking forward to some one-on-one Mommy time and to some new skills and books that are all hers.

Here's a peek at what I have in there:

Books - I gathered a variety to go through little by little over the first term: Leading Little Ones to Mary, Kindergarten Gems, Fr. Lord's The Rosary, Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks, Neumann Press' Catechism for Young Children, Winnie-the-Pooh, A Very Little Child's Book of Stories.  We're just picking up whichever book appeals to us that day--no set schedule.  When we finish a book, I'll add another one to the basket.  There are so many wonderful ones for this age.

Right Start Level B - This is what I started with when my big kids were in kindergarten...now they're almost done with Level E and ready to move on to another program!  Time flies.  I'm happy to be starting to work through this program once again with my newest student.  She loves her abacus and tally sticks. :)

And a bunch of other fun little items:

folding and cutting workbooks

a notebook in which she keeps track of words she knows by sight (ala Bestvater's The Living Page)

colored chalk and a slate

some word cards for us to play matching games with

stickers

a little notebook and pen

bananagrams for reading lessons

her current set of Bob books

a few field guides

scissors and tape, for her Important Projects ;)

My goal for myself is to spend some one-on-one time with her each school day, maybe twenty minutes.  That twenty minutes definitely doesn't happen all at once--usually it's five minutes here, five minutes there.  During this time, we do a combination of activities: reading lesson; read-aloud; math lesson; copywork; or a special project, like folding, cutting, or a game.  I try to hit each of those categories three times a week.

The rest of her "schoolwork" consists of joining in on the big kids' lessons when she is interested--which is pretty much all the time. ;)  I don't encourage her to listen in on their readings or narrate, but I do encourage her to sit in on just about everything else:

picture study

italian

memory work (though she doesn't have her own selections, she learns the big kids' with ease)

nature study and journaling

music study

morning basket - religious reading, calendar in English and Italian, poetry 

free readings done as read alouds

handicrafts

And during the rest of Naptime School session, while the littles are sleeping and I'm working with the big kids, she has a variety of activities available to her: lacing beads, pattern blocks, puzzles, paper dolls, and the usual craft supplies.

To give you an idea of how this all looks in action, here's how one day in our Charlotte Mason-style home kindergarten looks:

This morning after waking up, she went straight to her morning chores: got herself dressed, brushed her hair, and had her teeth brushed.  Then she spent a half hour playing with her little brothers and sisters and her dolly.  (There may or may not have been some squabbles during this time. ;))  

I called her to empty the dishwasher and then she helped set the breakfast table.  After morning prayers, she ate breakfast and took part in morning basket: our calendar in English and Italian, a Blake poem, a short chapter on bamboo from The World at Home, the page on St. Dominic from Benson's An Alphabet of Saints, and a couple pages from Thomas Tapper's Music Talks for Children.

She helped clear the breakfast table and then got herself and her younger sister dressed for outside play.  She played out there for a couple hours, making "soups" out of clover and crepe myrtle bark, taking care of her rock dolly, playing catch with her brothers, collecting leaves, hanging from the maple tree, and toting around baby sister.

She helped clean up the backyard and then washed up and changed herself and her little sister.  Then we read picture books: Pelle's New Suit and Madeline's Rescue.  When I left to handle the baby, she took over reading to the toddlers and did a couple she has memorized: Baby Loves and Jamberry.

While I got the little ones settled for nap, she got out her math materials, her slate and chalk, and her word book.  I needed to get a couple readings done with the big kids while the baby was still napping, so she curled up on the sofa with her dolly while I spent a half hour reading aloud and listening to narrations.  Halfway through, she took out a puzzle to do on the floor next to us.

Once we finished our readings, she joined us at the table for Italian: a few games of bingo with outdoor vocabulary, two songs, Simon Says to practice our body parts, and a Gouin series about going on a "nature adventure."  Then we looked at Monet's "Impression: Sunrise" together and the children made little sketches of the composition.  The big kids went in the other room to finish their math work, and she and I did a five-minute math lesson together (on partitioning ten using the abacus) and read a page about St. Dominic and the Rosary.  Then I wrote some words of her choice on her little chalkboard for her to copy below, and she added a word to her little notebook of words she knows by sight: into.  She spent the next half hour drawing with big sister while we listened to two chapters from On the Banks of Plum Creek.  Once the babies got up from nap, she danced and did jumping jacks with the rest of the kids while we went through our memory work, including folk song and hymn.

In the afternoon, she looked through the sand dollars we collected at the beach yesterday, helped fold laundry, ate dinner and helped with dinner chores, played games with Daddy, got out the towels and clothes for the evening bath, and read half a Bob book with Mommy.  Then bath, rosary, bedtime prayers, and lights out.

So as you can see, she is quite a busy girl!  I feel like we have a nice balance going of academics, time outdoors, chores, and play.  Her kindergarten year looks different from how her older siblings' looked, and I imagine our plans will change again for my son starting next year, and all the littles starting after that.  That's one of the great things about having a bunch of children--I have so many kindergartens ahead of me!